Some Don't Like It Hot

Why doesn't NASCAR like girls?

December 2003 By DAN NEIL Photos By RICHARD DOLE

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Mike Johnson, a 42-year-old mechanic from Pacifica, approaches. He is about as big as a storage shed, wearing a tank top emblazoned with "Bad Ass Boys Have Bad Ass Toys." He fumbles his introduction. Jackson — more political than all of California's gubernatorial candidates combined — signs his tank top. Johnson gushes: "Nice attitude."

Well, coming from him I bet that counts as gushing.

Troy Larsen, 23, a bare-chested iron worker from San Jose, declares that it's his ambition to "be with the one UmbrellaGirl who really is a blonde." The girls all point at themselves, even Krampitz, who is raven-haired.

Any man who has ever crashed and burned while coming on to a woman should really stand behind a hottie for a day and observe how clumsy men are. A guy walks up to Krampitz and asks her what's her brand, mistaking the compact in her back pocket for a can of dip. He is not kidding. Another calls out with a note of thin hope, "Hey, are you from Tennessee?" What does that mean? Does he expect Jackson to say, "Hell, yeah, sweetcheeks, I'm from Bristol. Clear out the corncrib 'cuz I wanna have yore baby!"

As the day progresses, Asiano has made some headway. The girls have gotten a gig working at the Cingular Wireless booth. They spend a hot afternoon posing with young men. Some of them don't have cameras. They just want to be close to the girls. One shaved-head kid, nearly drowning in his own blush, says: "Today is my birthday. I'm 17. You guys have made my day. You're . . . really hot." He runs away before I can get his name.

There are few times in life when you can actually hear a "buzz," a kind of low-frequency vox pop. of certain syllables that recrudesce into a charmed, charged current, a murmur that becomes a dull roar of an idea. So it is with UmbrellaGirls USA. By the end of the weekend, scores are wearing the team's sassy peel-and-stick logo — a bikini-clad girl posing with an umbrella. "Hey, look, it's the UmbrellaGirls." The girls — who are, after all, just girls, right? not celebrities except insofar as instant notoriety counts — are signing autographs. I feel sure I am witnessing the birth of an icon.